dual booting. And what distro should I get?

Geoff Shang Geoff at quitelikely.com
Wed Oct 31 12:59:55 UTC 2007


Hi Daniel,

First, a bit of advice.  You're probably likely to get a response if you:

1.  Ask only a few questions in a message.

2.  Demonstrate that you've done, or tried to do, a bit of research first.

A message like the one you posted is very daunting to answer and you're 
likely to see it either go unanswered altogether or only get answers to 
some questions.  But I will try my best to cover them all.

Daniel Dalton wrote:

> Anyway what do I need to do to partition a hard disk for linux?
> I want to dual boot windows vista and linux.

First, you may want to consider putting in  an extra drive for LInux.  This 
is a lot less risky as you won't be needing to mess with the drive that 
your Windows install is on except maybe to install a boot loader.  But you 
can put it all on the one drive if you want.

> What is required to setup a dual booting system?

Most if not all Linux installers will give you the opportunity to partition 
a drive, so there is no need to do this before starting the install. 
However, if there is a partitioning tool that you're used to, you may 
choose to use it instead if you'd prefer.  such a tool probably can not 
make the required filesystems for the partitions, but this can be done by 
the installer.

A Linux installation manual I read once said that there are probably as 
many partitioning schemes as there are system administrators.  But you will 
need at the very least a root partition and a swap partition.  You can use 
a swap file but this is inefficient and not recommended.  Swap is often 
twice the size of the available RAM, though if you have a lot of RAM then a 
smaller size may be enough.  You may also want further partitions for 
things like /home, /var or /usr.

Linux will install a boot loader, and it is this which allows you to choose 
which OS to boot.  Note that the boot loader will need to be in the first 
partition of your first drive, even if this is the Windows partition, as 
the system needs to find it when it boots.

> Is there any chance of breaking something?

Absolutely!  Most installers will usually warn you if you are going to 
break something, but it is definitely possible to do so be sure to pay 
attention.  Usually though this is nothing that can't be solved by again 
booting your boot CD.  Using this to fix problems can take a bit of 
advanced knowledge though so it's best to pay attention when you first do 
it.

> Will my system always be bootable?

NOt if you mess up the partitioning, the boot loader configuration or your 
kernel.  But as I say, if you really get stuck you can always boot your 
install CD and get into the system that way and fix whatever you broke. 
It's generally a good idea to have an alternate way to boot your system 
anyway, in case of hardware trouble or in case you mess things up.

> And how hard is it to get it working.

If you use an official release of a distribution and you don't have exotic 
hardware, providing the installer runs in the first place it should be 
relatively easy to get a working system.

> What distro should I use?
> I was thinking debian or fedora. I tried the ubuntu livecd but don't think I 
> need a gui.

Distribution really is a personal choice.  The Debian users will advocate 
Debian.  The fedora users will advocate Fedora.  If you don't want a GUI 
then you probably don't need Ubuntu.  You can use Ubuntu without the GUI, 
but a Debian install (Ubuntu is based on Debian) is more straight forward 
if you don't want to use a GuI.

> So is debian a good choice?

Personally I believe it is the best choice, but I have been using Debian 
for nearly 9 years as my primary operating system so I would say that.  It 
is certainly not a poor choice.

> How hard is it to patch speakup in to the debian kernal? And how hard is it 
> to dual boot debian with windows?

It is no more difficult to dual boot Debian with Windows than it is to dual 
boot any other Linux variant.  As for Speakup, there are packages for using 
Speakup under Debian and it is in fact  possible to install Debian using 
Speakup.

> And what would I need to do to get brltty working with debian?

Just install the brltty package and configure it for your display.

> BTW Does debian use apt-get install?

Yes.  If you are familiar with Apt then you should probably go with Debian.

> And can I just choose to install the debian console? (No gui?)

Yes you can.

If you have a hardware synth that works with Speakup, you can install 
Debian Etch using the net install ISO available at 
http://people.debian.org/~shane/netinst-speakup/

The only warning I have is that when I  installed with it, I found myself 
in a position where no kernels were defined in the boot loader so Linux 
wouldn't boot.   I wrote to the maintainer about this but I see the ISO 
image is still the same one I used.  The message I got back seemed to 
suggest that mine was somewhat of an isolated case.

Best of luck,
Geoff.




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